The Range Rover Classic thread

[DonkeyApple]

The more I look at it the more I think it's been cleverly done. The main panels are from an 80s era car. The shell itself has obviously been resprayed. The rear pillar panels are later ones and have been painted then aged.

Whether the chassis and drivetrain are original to the VIN might be impossible to establish but given its price and if it has been done to the right quality then it seems fair value and something different.

[DonkeyApple]

I've bitten the bullet on my 89 4 door and sent it over to The Market. It went live yesterday.

Not the best time to be selling an event car when there are no events but it was just sad seeing it parked next to the 72 every day and not being used.

It's been a cracking car and if it sells will be a real bargain for someone.

[DonkeyApple]

DKL said:

Exhausts - we must have been here before but it looks like I shall need to replace some bits so I'd rather do the whole thing, manifolds to tail pipe.
Kingsley do the "best" option but at what cost! I imagine a good, local fabricator may be able to do similar.
Or there is SS which I'd need to graft cats into.
Anyone with a cat car had something new anytime recently?

I think it depends on what you're looking to achieve. I can't recall if you've a silly engine in yours?

With a normal Rangie I don't think I'd worry too many ch about performance gains. A good exhaust would probably deliver an easy 5-10% gain but in our big, fat vans it's kind of irrelevant. It's the waffle of the V8 that's what we want to protect?

The stainless steel stuff that Rimmers sell seems more than good enough. Lord knows who Kingsley are selling to but if you had already built a very special RV8 to deliver proper performance to a Rangie then at best I'd find out who they are buying from and go direct for a quarter as much.

[DonkeyApple]

cayman-black said:

I thought i recognised that plate. good luck DA.

Thanks. Never actually sold this way before and despite being a glorified bookie and Shylock, I still don't understand how humans gamble like this. I'm an actuary at heart!

[DonkeyApple]

cayman-black said:

DonkeyApple said:

cayman-black said:

I thought i recognised that plate. good luck DA.

Thanks. Never actually sold this way before and despite being a glorified bookie and Shylock, I still don't understand how humans gamble like this. I'm an actuary at heart!

IMO i think you are in for a surprise. I watched an RRC that was listed between £22k and £27k achieve £45k yesterday which even i thought was an incredible price for that car.

Would be nice. I took a gamble and cleaned it so that all the surface rust in the usual places is on show as opposed to everyone else covering it with black wax. As it's not an SE and doesn't have any gadgets my wild stab in the dark is that someone who genuinely knows Rangies will be drawn to it.

[DonkeyApple]

Don't they call them survivor cars now? After decades of Americans eradicating all traces of a car's history, replacing everything and covering all surfaces in 5mm of gloss as everything in America has to be shiny, they seem to suddenly be valuing history but even history for some reason has to be branded and explained, repackaged and sold as something new and exciting so they seem to be calling old cars that haven't been eradicated, survivor cars?

But the value of old Classics is that there aren't many other old cars that you can stick the whole family and the dog in for a day out to an event and park next to Fat Barry and his old transit or VAT Carrousel Viktor and his one hour old Roller and be happy as Larry. It's the classic that you can park at any end of the field that takes your fancy that day. But with there being no such events there isn't much demand for them at present.

[DonkeyApple]

I've always used Graeme to sell my cars and he's always done a great job of getting me what I felt was fair and still taking a healthy slice. I didn't use him this time around as the Classic I was selling wasn't London spec and he's had a few fancier ones stuck for a while.

The market is a bit soft at the moment compared to other cars because Classics tend to be event cars rather than just classics used for going for a drive and obviously there are no events happening. Nothing to sling the family in and a hamper to go and watch.

[DonkeyApple]

Harleyboy said:

This thread has been a little quiet lately but luckily the previous poster and I can come to the rescue. I'd appreciate the collective's thoughts on the latest 'challenges' mine is experiencing. Generally, it's running fairly well but has the following annoying issue:

Cold start and idle is good for maybe 30-60 seconds before becoming exceedingly rough and hunting around but not quite stalling. If I keep revs on it drives OK. This goes away after a few minutes and then restarts (not from cold) are fine with no rough running. I wondered if the stepper motor might be an issue? This had been sticking but a man took it out and lubed it up...

Second and possibly more costly issue is general performance which I think is gearbox related. Its a ZF 4 speed auto. It is very sluggish, not just old car with perhaps 70% of its original power sluggish either. Its as if it is setting off in too high a gear. I have to keep forcing it to kickdown to get anything feeling like normal acceleration. Then it actually goes well. Shifts are clunky but improve when warm.

It is better than it was though having had an oil change as this issue had been present for some time.

I'm wondering if it needs a replacement gearbox - do any of these symptoms sound familiar?

For my 89 the rough idle when cold was due to the ECU and the choke function having fried.

It would start fine but then need revs to prevent stalling. The old RV8 trick of resetting the brain by holding 2000+ rpm for a while sometimes still worked but you basically had to drive away using the TVR style left foot braking to prevent stalling.

The same fix solved another issue which was that the car was running on 7 cylinders when pottering and somehow kicking down would get the eighth to fire.

One of the symptoms was that it was running rich so the exhaust was a bit sooty.

[DonkeyApple]

T-J-C said:

My soft dash LSE 4.2 lost oil pressure yesterday and now has a top end rattle. Dipstick is showing overfilled, it was the correct level before.

Anyone had this happen before? It was left for about 5 weeks and was rattly when started but I assumed the tappets were dry and they went quite after a few seconds.

I think first thing to do is take the timing cover off and check the pump.

If the level has risen (check when cold) then I'd just start with sniffing the oil to establish whether it's water or fuel that's managed to add itself to the oil.

Oil pressure dropping is one issue but it's the rise in oil level that suggests the best starting point for quickly diagnosing the issue.

If it were me, I'd also just do an oil change to quickly see if that gave me pressure back and oiled the tappets as the next step if the sniff test didn't scream an answer and borrow the direction down.

[DonkeyApple]

RobXjcoupe said:

Next seat question, did any 2 door version ever have electrically operated front seats?

No. By the time they were electrifying the Vogue seats the 2 doors were being sold as commercials only. Even the CSK used the manual seats.

You can fit the 4 door electric seats and run a switch to the door side to slide them forward so someone can get in the back. The other alternative is that some other modernish cabriolets used electric seats with integrated seat belts. Go too new and the seats are all wrapped into the car ECU but the common one was the seats from the early 90s 3 series cabriolet. Right size, integrated belts and dumb. The issue being the look.

[DonkeyApple]

Thoise would be a much better style fit than the BMW ones.

[DonkeyApple]

What's the actual issue with E10?

I used all modern pipes when restoring my 72 and its easy enough to deal with that if this is the main issue but are there other issues?

[DonkeyApple]

NomduJour said:

Ethanol’s a solvent, so it eats rubber etc, and it’s hygroscopic, so you get rust from condensation in the fuel system and water in the bottom of the tank.

French E10 went straight through an old epoxy tank repair I didn’t know about on my LSE.

Yup. I've fitted a plastic tank and suitable plumbing that's supposed to be ethanol proof but I was wondering if there are other issues?

[DonkeyApple]

With the Disco 1 being made up to 98 then hopefully there's an easy supply of complaint components for anyone who didn't upgrade when e5 came in.

What's going to be important is to not leave fuel in the tank for more than a couple of months to avoid the phase separation of having to use e10 fuel. When you look online it seems to be that much of the debris and corrosion issues are more water related than corrosion directly from ethanol.

Our cars don't generally have any anti syphon blocks so I suspect we will generally get used to either syphoning out our tanks when low, or using the fuel pump to empty them into suitable containers where the water can be left behind when reintroducing the fuel?

Alternatively, could we not just pour ethanol into the tank to take up the water and let the engine burn it off?

I'm sure the Americans will have loads of solutions for e10 as its been there a while?

[DonkeyApple]

jon-yprpe said:

Thanks Rob. You can go 235 on a standard Rostyle ok, I have seen a few fitted on Defenders etc. I like the 7” wheels and they’re tubeless but I also saw some on a car at Twenty-Ten and wasn’t that impressed with the finish on them (they were nothing to do with Twenty Ten). The Kingsley ones are £££££££. But I don’t feel the need to go from 6” to 7” if I can resolve the tyre situation for the standard wheels.

Personally, I wouldn't go that wide on a 6J wheel. I've also seen it done on Defenders but take the view that just because it can be done doesn't mean it's sensible to. That's a lot of contract area in a corner pulling against a wheel that has no second lip.

Definitely fit tubes. You don't want a tyre deflating mid chicane on the Mulsanne Straight. Most tubes are junk though and I get mine from Julian Majzub's Blockley Tyres. Proper quality. You then need to have them fitted by someone who has proper experience of inner tubes and will chalk them up, sit them properly and not tear them when fitting. Most tyre fitters will be quite vociferous that they know exactly what they are doing. Most haven't a scooby or a care.

Someone mentioned powder coating? It's the way forward but when being prepped the blaster has to pay a lot of attention to cleaning out the join to the rim. They need to switch to a finer grit to stand a chance of getting the rust out. Again, like tyre fitters, most are ultra professionals who 110% know what they are doing and are the best on the planet at this work. They are dumbass chimps with cloth ears who weren't smacked enough as apprentices to get their brains up and running. If the chap won't do the job properly then you'll have rust coming through the powder coat in less than a season. It also takes good skill to get enough powder in the join without ending up with too much and it running.

Ideally you want to inspect the wheels before they go for painting. Making that clear at the outset will at least mean the blaster makes some kind of effort and his lost time will be won back on other customer's bodged jobs.

And of course, the other reason to find a tyre fitters with genetic sequencing as close to home sapiens is so that they don't chip off that powder coat when fitting the tyres.

[DonkeyApple]

jon-yprpe said:

Yes, the point on powder coating is well made. That’s what put me off the ones on ebay that I saw at Twenty-Ten, the ‘gap’ was roughly filled with paint and the welding between the rim and face was messy.

Good thought on Blockley tyres, and I can carry the wheels over there from where they’ll be blasted and powdercoated.

The Kahn wheels are quite cool, but won’t fit the early 80s vibe of mine.

I'm searching for a different solution to you in that I want the roystyle centre in a modern 17" rim so that I can access a far wider range of 205 road tyres.

I've looked at the alloy options. Both Kahn and Twisted have versions but you can't get the right profile using aluminium. The closest I've seen are the AR500s in the US. Rostyle was of course, a sanctioned copy of that AR design but the PCD can't be done to our size.

My wheels have barely lasted two years and will need redoing. A friend has redone his himself, blasting them himself so he absolutely knew every bit of rust was gone and then primering them before running a resin into the the joint area and then spraying them up. They look outstanding and my plan is to see how they weather over the coming years as he will not be precious over how he uses his Landy and if they hold up then I'm going to copy him.

Incidentally, if you do find yourself over at Blockley then I'm in the next village so you'd be welcome to drop by, grab a beer and to talk bks about cars.

[DonkeyApple]

jon-yprpe said:

Thanks everyone for the help.

DA - I live in Blockley, so when mine’s finished love to meet up. I’ve got a mate with a Suffix A in the village as well.

How bizzarre. The only other old Rangie I knew down there was a Green one that's now owned by Ben Mather on Northwick Park.

I'm the house with the funny garage/barn over the driveway just as you reach Bourton on the Hill.

[DonkeyApple]

Harleyboy said:

Finally getting around to sorting my headlining out after 9 years of ownership and driving around in something like a prop from Arabian Knights.

I won’t even attempt to do it myself so wondered if anyone had experience of the service sold on the well known auction site.
Chap is Taunton based and is about £230 for a sunroof job which seems reasonable.

I’m in North Wiltshire so if there was anyone more local at a similar price that would be good.

Thanks

Worth asking Trevor at Natuonwide for a price as he's done so many and they're good. Chance of anything not being right will be slim.

[DonkeyApple]

Harleyboy said:

Thanks - have emailed him

He has an email account??!!

[DonkeyApple]

jon-yprpe said:

Ah, I know. We’re the long barn down the Draycott Rd near the gym. The ardennes green G reg 3.9 that lived in the village? The suffix A isn’t on the road yet, nor is mine. There’s at least 6 E-types in the village but you rarely see them!

Yup that's the one. Was owned by the chap who also has the pale yellow etype. Ben's now got it up on Northwick.

Where we are is quite good for seeing nice cars as well as hearing them as they open up either down into Blockley or to Evesham.

Sadly, I'm being blighted by motorbikes. We had them all through lockdown as they were the only group seemingly ignoring lockdown and gathering for ride outs but it's reached epidemic proportions in the last couple of weeks.

Oh, and the new Gulf station (back again after 15 years!!) is now 24 hours which is superb for stoners but having just cleared a load of foliage I've just realised that my evening view from the upstairs living room is reminiscent of Las Vegas.